iThe Frick CollectionUpper East Side
Kent Monkman: Officer and Laughing Girl
New paintings by contemporary artist Kent Monkman responding to Vermeer's Officer and Laughing Girl, examining trade, colonization and Indigenous-European encounters through his alter ego Miss Chief.
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Preview: written before the show opened
The painting that prompted this show hangs a short walk away. When you finish in the installation, the Frick points you to the South Hall to see Vermeer's Officer and Laughing Girl, painted around 1657, the picture Kent Monkman is answering.
Monkman's new paintings fill the Cabinet Gallery. He uses Vermeer's scene as a way into how Dutch art of the period showed the effects of global trade and colonization. His alter ego Miss Chief, who time-travels and shapeshifts, carries the story through five centuries of Indigenous and European encounters, with the cultural, technological and environmental changes that came with them.
The series travels on to the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick, with a bilingual English and Canadian French catalogue. Admission is $30 and included in general museum entry; the Frick is closed Tuesdays.
Editor's pick
New paintings by Kent Monkman answer Vermeer's Officer and Laughing Girl. His alter ego Miss Chief enters the picture to look at trade, colonization and the encounters between Indigenous people and Europeans.
Good for
- Locals Who've Seen It All
- Out-Of-Town Guests
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Image credits
8
- Kent Monkman: Officer and Laughing GirlThe Frick Collection
- There Are No Words: Si Lewen's ParadeCourtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Krasner and Pollock: Past ContinuousCourtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- The Frick CollectionJim.henderson / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- The Metropolitan Museum of ArtHugo Schneider, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
- Neue Galerie New YorkFrancesca.hyanna19 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- American Museum of Natural HistoryIngfbruno, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- ApertureCourtesy of Aperture